Merrick Creative published an essay by Thomas Frank, its partner and chief creative officer, arguing that the developers pulling ahead in commercial real estate are often reworking existing buildings instead of starting over. The piece built its case around Chris Clifford, a retail broker and developer at Cast Capital Partners, and his appearance on the firm's Place Shapers podcast, quoting him: "When you look across the nation right now, the projects that are doing extremely well are the ones that take the old and make it new again."
Frank wrote that when Clifford's team looked at the former office campus that would become The Cliff, which the essay called a $72 million transformation in Henderson, they saw structure and character that a ground-up project could not replicate. He quoted Clifford on the Las Vegas habit of clearing sites: "It's usually bulldoze and start from scratch." The essay noted that Clifford was direct about how hard this kind of project is, and stated that adaptive reuse is not a cost-saving strategy, since new gas lines, electrical upgrades, grease traps and HVAC work can rival or exceed the cost of new construction. The payoff, Frank argued, is a project that tenants and the surrounding community respond to differently.
The article closed by identifying Clifford as a partner at Cast Capital Partners and the developer behind The Cliff, an open-air, experience-first retail destination under development in Henderson, Nevada.